Community
Striving to be a responsible corporate citizen with a positive impact on our community and environment
Pursuing a ‘giving back’ strategy
Lansons demonstrates a clear commitment to charitable work by actively supporting a number of organisations and we give one per cent of our annual profits to good causes.
Each year our staff selects a chosen charity and for 2012/2013 we are delighted to be supporting the work of The Soldiers Charity.
We also aim to support activities happening within our local community and are pleased to have helped Bart’s Hospital, our neighbour across Smithfield Market, with its work. And we actively encourage our account managers and above to volunteer as trustees of charities through our collaboration with Getting on Board and offer their communications skills at a senior level – currently two of our staff aged under 35 are now on the boards of charities.
Pro-bono
Lansons has a pro-bono programme offering brainstorms for charity organisations in order to give something back in the form of consultancy skills. This important work also affords our staff the opportunity to up-skill and use their professional expertise outside their day to-day environment.
Investment 2020
We are proud to support ‘Investment 2020’; a commitment by thirteen of Britain’s leading investment firms to create job opportunities in The City for students and recent graduates regardless of background.
Like its founders, we recognise the importance of helping a wider range of graduates and schools get their first step on the career ladder.
HighTide
Since 2008, HighTide and Lansons Communications have enjoyed a relationship that is unique between an arts charity and business. We donate office space, IT support, meeting rooms and reception services to enable the charity to reallocate resources towards achieving its charitable aims through the production of more theatre.
Put simply, Lansons Communications’ support enables HighTide to source, develop and produce more emerging artists, be prolific and ambitious in their productions and keep ticket prices comparatively low. HighTide contribute to Lansons’ community work, as well as running personal development training for our staff and providing tailored entertainment packages for our clients.
For more information on HighTide, Lansons Communications and our working relationship please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Steven Atkinson
Chief Executive
HighTide
E development@highide.org.uk
Clare Parsons
Chairman
Lansons Communications
E clarep@lansons.com
2013 Women's Prize for Fiction
Lansons is proud to become a co supporter of the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Now in its eighteenth year, the Women’s Prize for Fiction was set up to celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women throughout the world. Known from 1996 to 2012 as the Orange Prize for Fiction, it is the UK’s most prestigious annual book award for fiction written by a woman and also provides a range of educational, literacy or research initiatives to support reading and writing.
The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 is awarded annually for the best full novel of the year written by a woman and published in the UK. Any woman writing in English – whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter – is eligible.
This year six novels have been shortlisted; Life After Life by Kate Atkinson; May We Be Forgiven by A.M Homes; Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver; Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel; Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple; and NW by Zadie Smith.
For the first time, this year’s shortlist includes two previous winners of the Orange Prize; Barbara Kingsolver who won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010 for The Lacuna, and Zadie Smith who won in 2006 for On Beauty.
“After an exhilarating meeting, all the judges were in agreement that this is an exceptional year for women's fiction,” commented Miranda Richardson, Chair of judges. “The shortlist for 2013 represents six tremendous writers at the top of their game. Their individual novels are flawlessly presented, they contain a heady mix of ideas and without exception take the reader on a unique and deeply satisfying journey.”
The winner will receive a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze figurine known as a ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven. The awards will take place on June 5th at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London following a series of public events.
For further details and information on how to enter please contact the Booktrust on query@booktrust.org.uk
Lansons supports Allison Bell
Lansons is a proud supporter of Soprano Allison Bell, providing an award of financial assistance to assist with her career development. Allison has established a unique reputation as a performer of "contemporary classical" music, working closely with some of the most important living composers including Peter Eötvös, Brett Dean and Richard Ayres. She has a strong relationship with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski in championing 20th and 21st century repertoire.
Allison’s most recent and future engagements include her Russian debut in Moscow with the Bolshoi Opera singing Le Feu... Read more
You can also find out more on Allison's agency website: http://www.ingpen.co.uk/artist/allison-bell/
Royal Shakespeare Company
Lansons continues to be a corporate supporter of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). The RSC is one of the world’s best known and most renowned theatre companies and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across the UK and the world, producing bold, ambitious work with living writers, actors and artists and helping people to connect with Shakespeare.
The RSC is committed to making Shakespeare vivid, accessible and enjoyable for children, young people and their teachers and reaches over 96,000 young people in primary and secondary schools across the country. 50% of school children across the world study Shakespeare and the RSC is working to produce professional development programmes for teachers aiming to transform classroom experiences of Shakespeare across the world. The RSC’s Young People’s Shakespeare also brings live performances of Shakespeare plays specially adapted for younger audiences into schools around the country. The RSC Key is a scheme for 16 to 25 year olds providing access to £5 theatre tickets and special events for young people.
As a registered charity the RSC needs to raise over £2m a year to enable them to continue their work, with an annual turnover of over £30m their most significant source of income is through the sponsorship programmes and donations of which Lansons is very proud to be a part.
Creative Clerkenwell
Lansons Communications has a great history of involvement and support of the local community and businesses. This year sees Lansons taking part in the Clerkenwell Design Week for the second year running. Lansons is collaborating with Creative Clerkenwell and The Gin Garden. The courtyard at Lansons Communications will be transformed into a secret gin garden and we invite you to come and discover its surprises.
Some of the activities within the Lansons secret gin garden will include: For a full list of activities please click here: www.lansons.com/pdfs/cdw_leaflet_final.pdf Clerkenwell Design Week Clerkenwell Design Week is one of the most important events in the design calendar. The three day festival celebrates design’s creative richness, social relevance and technological advancements through an exciting programme of workshops, presentations, product launches and debates. Clerkenwell Design Week features many elements including exhibitions, installations, street entertainment, music, food, parties and receptions. Creative Clerkenwell Creative Clerkenwell launched as an initiative aimed at connecting different parts of the design community during Clerkenwell Design Week in 2011. The Gin Garden The Gin Garden is a travelling gin garden. You will find them popping up in unexpected spaces, mixing and serving fabulous drinks. They work with distilleries, complementing the botanical of their unique gin with local herbs, fruits and flowers. They source as many ingredients as possible from local artisan producers and small businesses. Their drinks are unique to the area they are created in.
Pro Corda
Last year, Lansons became a supporter and corporate sponsor of Pro Corda - one of Europe’s leading music organisations which operates the International Chamber Music Academy for young musicians. Pro Corda is an educational charity which provides musical training for a wide range of young people through ensemble training and performance specialising in chamber music.
Pro Corda’s activities range from the International Chamber Music Academy, which offers specialist chamber music courses for ages 6-18, to their Nationwide Chamber Music Festival for Schools; and from their Early Years programme to a series of dedicated performing arts “Create Together” courses for young people with special educational needs (SEN). Our support is used in a bursary sponsorship scheme. New in its formation, the scheme enables us to directly support a bursary student and is the first of its kind.
Our business and the environment
Striving to be a good corporate citizen
At Lansons, we aim to minimise the impact our work has on the environment and we have had a full recycling program in place since early 2002. From the early days we have always worked on the basis of reduce, reuse and recycle and this still forms the basis of our environmental policy today.
In 2006 we became a carbon neutral company. Our latest Carbon Neutral Assessment is currently in progress. Results will be posted online once they are accredited.
Please view our certificate here and the projects we have chosen to off-set here.
Recycling
We have had a full office recycling scheme since 2002, we operate a ‘bin less’ office where there are no under desk bins, this encourages all staff to consider recycling when ever they create waste and we provide facilities to recycle all paper, plastic, glass and cans, used toner cartridges, computer equipment and mobile phones.
We recycle over 80% of the waste we currently produce and this is our minimum benchmark figure as we aim to reduce our overall waste produced in the next 5 years.
We have recently updated our food waste scheme which was previously being sent to Kent for composting and are now sending our food waste to an anaerobic facility in Bedfordshire. Anaerobic digestion is recognised by the government, Defra, the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament, Friends of the Earth and the National Farmers Union as one of the best methods for the sustainable management of food waste, farm waste and sewage sludge. Even with the extra journey time it takes for our trucks to reach the new destination, this is still more environmentally friendly than the previous process.
In 2009 we moved to a ‘zero to landfill’ waste policy ensuring that the waste we are unable to recycle is sent to a modern energy-from-waste plant where it is used to generate electricity. This ensures that nothing is sent to landfill, conserving resources and reducing our CO2 emissions.
Lansons Communications recycling totals for the period 1st January 2011 to 31st December 2012 can be viewed here.
Our recycling is collected by Paper Round Ltd, London.
We use a recycled brand of office paper and are continually reviewed our office supplies to ensure they are environmentally friendly wherever possible.
The key to our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Program is encouraging all staff to actively think about their impact on the environment in all aspects of their working days. The program is covered in our induction programs and updated to staff via our monthly forum meetings and through our internal communications.
Technology
In 2010 we moved to a virtualized server environment, consolidating our infrastructure resulting in reduced power usage.
In 2012 we will also move to a virtualized desktop infrastructure which is far more power efficient with thin-client devices replacing traditional desktop PC’s. We have also refreshed our desktop monitors to the latest energy efficient models. In early 2012 we reduced and replaced a number of workgroup printers with new energy efficient, double sided printers and also installed print management software that enable us to manage the print environment. Using this software we are able to force double sided printing by default and although we discourage e-mails from being printed by default, any that are printed are in Eco print mode, meaning a 50% reduction in ink usage.
We have video conferencing facilities on-site and actively encourage staff to use these as a replacement to face to face meeting that requires travel. We have audio conference all facilities in all meeting rooms.
In the office
We actively manage our supply chain to ensure that we are using suppliers with the highest environmental credentials ensuring that wherever possible local suppliers are used. We use Café Direct fair-trade tea and coffee, are a member of the UN Global Compact, use mains fed water coolers and, where possible, source goods from local suppliers. Our office electricity is supplied by Ecotricity, one of the UK's leading suppliers of green energy.
Ride2Work
The Lansons Communications’ Ride2Work scheme allows employees to purchase a bike at a reduced rate. We run this scheme through Evans Cycles and also provide secure bike parking, showers, changing facilities and clean towels. We have also signed up to the Department for Transport’s Cycle to Work Guarantee Scheme.
Green committee
Lansons has a green committee made up of staff whose responsibility it is to assess Lansons’ impact on the environment and for looking at ways of reducing our carbon footprint. We also encourage and appoint ‘Green Champions’ on individual floors to encourage staff with our reduction and recycling programs.
